


tired talk of better days

by FireflysLove



Series: Heartbreak World [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Handwavery, Post-RotJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-11 01:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12312225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflysLove/pseuds/FireflysLove
Summary: Three years after the Battle of Endor, Leia Organa attempts to hold the New Republic together. Her assistant, Astrie, attempts to hold Leia together.





	tired talk of better days

**Author's Note:**

> Flagrant OC creation. She's purple and I will show you pictures if you want to see them. This is going somewhere, I'm just not sure where.
> 
> Title from Matt Nathanson's Heartbreak World

Coruscant, 7 ABY

 

Astrie should have realized when she was hired that being Senator Organa’s aide was going to be a difficult position at best and downright hellish at worst. (She’d never been shot at at a formal function before this job, but that’s a story for another time.)

The resurrection of the Galactic Republic from the ashes of the Empire after more than two decades of civil war goes more smoothly than people expect in the beginning, due in no small part to the leadership of Leia Organa, raised at her father’s knee on the principles of democracy and justice, even in a society increasingly leaning away from those ideals.

Astrie had been hired at the end of the first year after the Battle of Endor after a rigorous audition process that had reduced at least one applicant to need psychiatric help. Leia was prone to fits of rage in private, and the final few applicants had seen more than one of these episodes. They were always under the thinnest veneer of control, she never completely lost it, but more than one vase had been broken over political matters.

In the last month of the interview process, Astrie had been pitted, and there was no doubt in her mind that it was a serious competition against two other beings, one of whom had been the applicant to require psychiatric help when the stress of the job became too much for them. Of the remaining two, Astrie and a Twi’lek named Iridia, Leia had decided to hire both, apparently. Astrie rarely saw Iridia, as the other was assigned to some of Senator Organa’s more… covert needs. Not that Astrie minded, she had no desire to be a spy, whatever the romantic novels might say about such a profession. No, her job was stressful enough.

Which is how she found herself, two years on, with one arm full of a stack of datapads, and the other a squalling toddler. Ben Organa had not been an easy infant, and from what Astrie had been able to gather, even before he had been born he had been difficult. The toddler was the lesser of the pressing concerns. The stack of datapads were missives from a group of senators who were vowing to leave the new Republic if their conditions weren’t met.

Astrie was well aware of galactic history. She was a few years older than Leia, and has faint memories of the end of the Clone Wars, battles which took the life of her father. Her family was from a Separatist world, and the idea of entire star systems breaking away from the Republic, plunging the galaxy into another war, so soon after the end of the last one, is abhorrent. In truth, there had been an unbroken chain of fighting since the blockade of Naboo nearly forty years previously, although after the three-year Clone Wars, pitched battles were less common than guerilla style warfare with strategic strikes by both sides, until the Death Star I had revealed itself in the most devastating way possible.

So she bundled the squalling child under an arm, hoisted the data pads, and took off at a dead run. Halfway to Leia’s office, she almost ran directly into someone. Luckily neither of her loads went flying, but the person himself bounced off a wall and turned to glare at her. “Watch where you’re going!” he said.

Looking up from making sure that everything is in its right place Astrie has a moment of good luck. She shoves Ben into his father’s arms, saying, “Here, I think he stubbed his toe, gotta go!”, and bolted off again.

She was nearly out of breath by the time she reached Leia’s office, and paused for a moment to catch it, just outside the door. Said door nearly smacked into her as it opened, and she jumped back with a squeak. A Togruta she vaguely recognized stepped out, and deftly stepped around her, giving her a nod. She took that as a signal, steeled herself, and entered the office.

Leia looked up from her own stack of datapads, and sighed. “The senators finally sent their demands, didn’t they?”

Astrie nodded, and offered the stack of pads. Leia took them, briefly read the contents of the first one, and then closed her eyes. She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed again. “I signed up for this, I know I did, but still, you’d think they’d remember _recent history_ a little better.”

“I don’t think some of them remember yesterday, to be honest,” Astrie said.

Leia snorted, “They barely remember to take their heads out of their asses,” she said. “And some of them not even that. Thank you for bringing these to me so fast, Astrie.”

“Of course, Senator,” Astrie said.

“Have you seen my son or husband by any chance?” Leia asked, beginning to sort through the dozen or so datapads Astrie had been carrying.

“Both, actually. Ben was crying and I sort of just… shoved him at Han on the way over here,” Astrie said, scratching the back of her neck.

“Ah. A good solution. Let the menfolk deal with the screaming children,” Leia said. “Not that I don’t love him, but sometimes Ben is… well… a bit of a handful.”

“Quite right,” Astrie said.

“I won’t keep you,” Leia said. “I know you have things you need to get done so shit doesn’t blow up in my face, for which I’m eternally grateful, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Astrie said, face heating. She did, in fact, have about eight thousand things to get done before the end of the day, and then a few hundred more after that.

She took the dismissal for what it was, and left Leia’s office. She returned to her own, a few doors down, and flopped down in the chair, skirt pooling on the floor. First on the list was sorting through tomorrow’s appointments, weeding out the crazies, and prioritizing notes to bring the most salient points of the meetings to a few bullet points that Leia could glance at in the few moments between appointments. It was a good thing that Leia only took appointments twice a week, or Astrie was fairly certain she’d be doing nothing but summarizing for the rest of her life.

There were the usual concerns, mid-Rim trade negotiations were all the rage right now, and Leia had to be partial to _all_ of them as far as the participants were concerned. It wasn’t as if Leia were Chancellor, a position that was re-elected every two years, and which Leia had so far declined to run for, but people treated her as if she were. Astrie was sometimes inundated by requests that she damn well knew had absolutely nothing to do with Leia, and these people were usually politely denied a meeting, and asked instead to send the Senator a message.

One of these, from a Senator Kilesh of Jonyu, was a repeat, this now, according to the first line, their eighth attempt to get an appointment with Senator Leia Organa regarding water quality on Jonyu. Astrie scratched her chin. Usually her tactics discouraged the less persistent, but after the fourth or fifth attempt, they had proved dedicated enough to warrant an actual meeting. Eight was highly unusual. She quickly pulled up the contact information of Kilesh’s assistant, and sent her a message asking when the Senator had time to meet with Leia.

She hadn’t made it any further than three datapads down the stack when, instead of replying to her message, the assistant walked through Astrie’s open office door.

“Astrie pel Hall’oran?” they asked.

“Yes,” Astrie replied.

“I’m Yrit, Senator Kilesh’s assistant,” the Jonyuan said.

“You could have just replied to the message,” Astrie said. Interruptions to her work that can be solved by other means generally irritate her, and she allowed this to creep into her voice just a bit.

“I was just down the hall… and… well…” Yrit said.

“Yes, yes,” Astrie said. “When works for the senator?”

It took a few moments to find a date and time that worked, but when Yrit left, they seemed pleased. Astrie turned back to her pile of work, as the sunlight crept across the floor, inching nearer and nearer to her desk. At some point, a Senate aide brought her food, and she absentmindedly consumed it, laser focused on the stacks of information that surrounded her.

Before she knew it, it was sunset, and there was a knock at her door.

“Astrie, you work too hard,” Leia said, leaning into the door frame. “Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow, come on, I’m going to buy you a drink.”

Astrie hesitated, looking at the pile of pads still in front of her, but an order _was_ an order, and she _was_ thirsty, so she allowed her better nature to prevail, shut down her terminal, and rose, stretching. The kinks in all her joints popped as she stood, sending an alarming _crack_ across the room.

“We need to get you a more ergonomic chair,” Leia said, regarding Astrie’s chair with disdain.

“Oh, it’s fine, Senator,” Astrie said.

“We’re off the clock, Astrie, call me Leia,” Leia said. “And no it’s not, I know for a fact you have joints in places I wouldn’t even think of.”

It was true, Astrie was more jointed than a human, but it still seemed unnecessary.

“Please, Astrie, it’s the least I can do,” Leia said. “You save me from insanity three times a week, I can do your back a favor.”

“Well…” Astrie said, finally reaching the door. Leia reached up to put a hand on her shoulder, and they started off down the hall. “There is this one model I’ve been lusting after for a while…”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @anakinslefthand on Tumblr


End file.
